IBM: 61 percent of IT professionals see security as the top barrier to enterprise mobility

December 6, 2012 | By Fred Donovan

A full 61 percent of IT professionals see security as the top barrier to adoption of mobile technology in the enterprise, according to a survey of more than 1,200 IT and business decision makers conducted by IBM (NYSE: IBM).

Other barriers to mobile technology adoption include integration of mobile with existing infrastructure and data (44 percent) and difficulty in extending applications to mobile (38 percent).

Yet, nearly 70 percent of respondents said their enterprises plan to increase investment in mobile technology over the next two years, according to the 2012 IBM Tech Trends Report.

Security is also the number one barrier to cloud and social business technology adoption, and the number two barrier to business analytics technology adoption, according to the survey.

"Security concerns consistently rank as the most significant barrier to adoption across mobile, cloud computing and social business. Even in business analytics, where data typically stays inside an organization's firewall, securing and controlling access to data still places as the number-two barrier to adoption," according to the IBM report.

The report also identified major IT skills gaps in the technologies examined: mobile, cloud, social, and analytics.

Dan Hauenstein, manager for academic initiative strategy at IBM, told FierceMobileIT that "there is a skills gap around these technologies and it is growing to the point where there is concern it could threaten innovation and growth."

"When you look across the technology spaces, security is far and away the top barrier to adoption cited," Hauenstein said.

To address these gaps, IBM has launched a number of initiatives to improve IT skills training. "We are making the most significant expansion to our academic initiative program since its launch in 2004. One key area where we are taking action is around security and helping students get cybersecurity skills that are marketable," he explained.

IBM's new cybersecurity offerings include a curriculum that brings real-world technology security scenarios into the classroom, helping students understand enterprise security challenges, as well as access to security software that professors can use in the classroom to teach students how to test applications for bugs and check network and virtualized servers for vulnerabilities.

"What is going to hold us back from applying these technologies is the security barrier that was cited in the report," Hauenstein concluded.